


this haunting is anatomical

by juinbug (rainydaydreams)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mid Season 5B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25170595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainydaydreams/pseuds/juinbug
Summary: Theo sits himself down at Scott’s kitchen table, cool as a gun, as though he isn’t a killer, isn’t Scott’s killer, comfortable in his skin in a way that Scott can only envy. “Aren’t you going to serve your guest?”
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	this haunting is anatomical

**Author's Note:**

> title is from WHY ARE YOU HAUNTED?: a survey (https://filmnoirsbian.tumblr.com/post/190801518765/why-are-you-haunted)

He’s standing in front of the stove, watching the water slowly start to boil. Slow, shitty stove. Open wound in his chest. Same old, Scott laughs under his breath, and then immediately regrets it as he breathes through the sharp pains of a body that still remembers being _dead_. He doesn’t dream anymore. His nights seem to be long blank swathes in his memory and then, inevitably, he makes himself shitty tea at four in the morning and tries to remember what it felt like to breathe without hurting. “I was dead,” he mouths at his reflection in the kettle, “and now I’m not.”

“No, you aren’t. Or are you?” A soft, smug voice by the kitchen door.

Scott whips around, wincing from the pain of sudden, fast, _any_ movement, and faces the boy who murdered him. “How did you get in?” he demands, eyes red but no claws. He controls his heartbeat and hopes the lack of claws will make it seem like he isn’t afraid, and not something… else.

Theo smirks, and he’s beautiful in such a cruel way. Scott never noticed before, and wonders what he looks like when he smiles now. He hasn’t smiled in a while. 

“The same way anyone gets in, Scott. Through the door.” He sits himself down at Scott’s kitchen table, cool as a gun, as though he isn’t a killer, isn’t Scott’s killer, comfortable in his skin in a way that Scott, even now, can only envy. “Aren’t you going to serve your guest?”

Scott stares at him, stands there in front of his stove and stares at this boy sitting at his kitchen table asking for tea with a smug grin and blood stained hands. Scott’s blood. And then Scott snorts, because this has been his life for a while now, and gets another mug out, the one with the chipped handle that his dad used to drink out of, just for kicks, and pours out burning hot raw tea for them both. He shoves his dad’s mug at Theo, handle first, and sets about adding sugar and lemon into his own cup. “What do you want?” Scott forces himself to ask as he studiously measures out two, three and why the fuck not, a fourth spoonful of sugar for himself, and resolutely does not offer Theo any. “Why are you here?”

Theo, maddening and practiced, sips slowly and deliberately at his tea, smirking slightly at the bitter taste, before he says anything. “You shouldn’t take so much sugar with your tea, you know. You’ll get diabetes. Die an early death.”

And Scott, _god_ , Scott’s torn between laughing until he cries or possibly just until his bandages tear, or throwing his scalding cup into Theo’s face. He settles on staring at Theo, a move that he knows makes people assume that Scott is slow and earnest and he is, he cares so much, but he doesn’t care about Theo. A freeing realization, Scott realizes, _I don’t care about the boy who murdered me_.

“You need to leave,” Scott says with eyes flashing red – and still no claws – and wonders of all wonders, he does.

Theo slips out the kitchen door, leaving Scott alone in his home, staring at the shiny surface of the kettle again. His eyes glow like embers in his reflection, and carefully, as carefully as he can bear, Scott lets his claws out.

“I was dead,” he whispers, “and now I’m not.”

.

Twelve am and one am and four am a week later, and Scott is once again standing in front of his stove, the slowest stove in existence according to his mother, waiting for the frying pan to heat up. Two eggs, scrambled with chopped onions, and this is what Scott lived on through middle school while his mom pulled shift after shift at the hospital to keep them going. He doesn’t cry when he chops up onions anymore, but that wasn’t a perk of lycanthropy. Scott snorts and his wound doesn’t send shooting pains in rebuke this time. He must be healing. He once had a life and skills before lycanthropy. Four in the morning, Scott is noticing, is a time of introspection.

It is also, apparently, a time for unwanted and murderous unannounced guests. Scott senses it straight away this time, Theo standing inside his kitchen, and Scott doesn’t know how he ever thought Theo was beautiful in any way. Theo is huge inside of Scott’s kitchen, he takes up all of the space and the air and it’s like he’s burning everything around him.

Theo is not comfortable in his skin, and still, Scott envies his ability to fake it. Theo is too deliberate, too controlled, to ever be anything but constantly furious. Without saying anything, Scott sets out another plate and his dad’s ugly chipped old mug, and laughs at his own joke.

“Why did you kill me?” Scott asks as he watches Theo cut into his omelette.

“I don’t know. I was supposed to.”

Scott lets out a breath as he realizes that this is as close to an apology, as close to anything, as he’s going to get. It’s not enough.

“You need to leave now.” And two wonders in the space of a week, someone must be watching out for Scott, because Theo leaves with the same silent and controlled footsteps he slipped in with.

Once again, Scott is alone in his kitchen and it’s almost like he’s seeing clearly in a way he hasn’t been able to since – since several things happened all at once and then he died. The kitchen, yellow and sunny but nevertheless dreary in these hours of the morning, is suddenly in detail, in sharp contrast of colours and smells and textures.

“I was dead, and now I’m not, so I must be alive,” Scott says out loud once he is sure Theo is out of earshot. So who, Scott wonders to himself, is the smell of rot coming from?

.

Six am and Scott is furious. He’s furious at himself and at Stiles and at Theo and at his stupid fucking stove that takes ten years to boil _water_ and it’s all he’s got left not to pull the burner off and throw it at _Theo who is standing in his kitchen again like he belongs here_.

He doesn’t belong here.

“This is my kitchen,” Scott snarls as he grips onto the counter to steady his hands – claws - and prevent himself from causing destruction to something they can’t afford to replace. Which is – stupid, because Mason’s out there and he’s _good_ and none of this has ever been fair. “This is my kitchen and you’re going to leave now.”

“Please,” and Scott’s never heard Theo sound so desperate, “Please, you can help me.” And then Scott takes in the smell that accompanied Theo’s arrival, a sickening combination of rot and familiar copper tang, and Scott turns around to look at him.

Theo is falling apart. Scott watches as a clump of his hair falls out and onto his kitchen floor and – god, his mom is not going to like this. Theo is rotting from the inside out, and he looks like it, as he collapses into a chair, with blood congealing thick and grey at the sides of his mouth and eyes, and despite himself, despite his body flinching away, Scott kneels in front of Theo to look him in the eye.

“You were dead,” Theo bites out and his face is so bruised, it looks grey, or maybe it’s the other way around, “and now you’re not. I was dead, and I still am.”

This is – well, not quite a revelation, because Scott had his suspicions. “The Dread doctors? You ripped out your own sister’s heart and now what, it’s running out of juice or something?” he asks, and Theo, for all his flaws, has a sense of humour somewhere in his rapidly decaying body. “Something like that.”

“What do you want from me?” Scott asks, because even now, even after all this, he doesn’t want to watch someone else die. “I can’t help you.”

He’s holding Theo upright at this point, close enough to kiss, and his eyes are drawn to Theo’s lips as they quirk upwards into a smirk. Theo’s hand, cold and grey, drags up Scott’s freshly healed chest and settles flat above his heart, which is beating a mile a minute. “I can always hear your heartbeat, you know. Even on the other side of town. I can always hear your heart beating, and _I want it_.”

And maybe – maybe Scott is slow to react sometimes, because he finds himself on the floor – again – and Theo’s hands are claws – again – and they’re ripping open his chest and Scott thinks his heart might beat so hard it bursts, which would, he somehow finds the space to think, defeat the purpose.

Scott is so - tired. He just wanted some badly brewed tea and now he’s probably going to die again. _If I die twice,_ Scott thinks, _that would probably suck._ Somehow over the roaring of the blood in his ears and Theo’s snarls and the sound of claws scraping into flesh and furniture, Scott hears what has signaled a small sort of salvation for the last few weeks, the kettle going off. With everything that’s left in him, Scott grabs the kettle and dumps its burning contents onto Theo’s face.

The results aren’t pretty, Theo is screaming in agony and Scott is scrambling backwards, clutching at his bleeding chest and grabbing for the landline, his cell phone, anything, when there is a sudden chill in the air. Scott recognizes it now, after all these weeks, and when the Dread Doctors surround Theo instead of him, he only watches numbly as – in the space of one, two, three heartbeats – his kitchen is emptied of everything and everyone except him, alone with only the gouges in his furniture and body to prove anything had happened.

.

“It’s okay,” Scott says when his mother finds him drinking tea with five spoonfuls of sugar in the kitchen two hours later, “I’m not dead.”


End file.
